Like most, I was looking for a DIY wort chiller. I got a good deal on 100ft of 1/2" SS Tubing and thought it could make a 50' HERMS coil and a 50' IC out of it.
I read tons of threads and saw that Kal was able to bend his by hand (even though he recommends buying one already made - and so do I, now) and thought it looked easy enough. WRONG! It was not working. My buddy thought of the idea of wrapping it around a small tree trunk. So we anchored one end into the tree with a concrete screw and walked the tubing around the tree while keeping it in a tight coil. It actually work VERY well, except we didn't factor in how we were going to get it off the tree.
Luckily, my buddy was planning on cutting the tree down anyways, so we just slid it off the trunk. Now the REAL hard part came: making the bends for the IC fittings. We tried making the bends by hand, and it worked to some extent, trying to turn the tubing upwards to get enough height to reach over the lip of my kettle. But it wasn't the prettiest thing and we couldn't get the tubing to bend "outward". We got one real bad Kink trying to make a 90 degree bend.
Then I thought of the idea of using a pulley. I put the pulley in a vice, and slide the tubing in, like you would with rope, and began beating on it with a rubber mallet. By moving the tubing 1/4" at a time and beating on it, I was able to get a moderate bend without kinking it. I still had the one major kink that I tried to beat out, but broke through the tubing, so I cut it off with a hacksaw and need to make a slight bend in it. I will try to post a picture of the completed project.
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I read tons of threads and saw that Kal was able to bend his by hand (even though he recommends buying one already made - and so do I, now) and thought it looked easy enough. WRONG! It was not working. My buddy thought of the idea of wrapping it around a small tree trunk. So we anchored one end into the tree with a concrete screw and walked the tubing around the tree while keeping it in a tight coil. It actually work VERY well, except we didn't factor in how we were going to get it off the tree.
Luckily, my buddy was planning on cutting the tree down anyways, so we just slid it off the trunk. Now the REAL hard part came: making the bends for the IC fittings. We tried making the bends by hand, and it worked to some extent, trying to turn the tubing upwards to get enough height to reach over the lip of my kettle. But it wasn't the prettiest thing and we couldn't get the tubing to bend "outward". We got one real bad Kink trying to make a 90 degree bend.
Then I thought of the idea of using a pulley. I put the pulley in a vice, and slide the tubing in, like you would with rope, and began beating on it with a rubber mallet. By moving the tubing 1/4" at a time and beating on it, I was able to get a moderate bend without kinking it. I still had the one major kink that I tried to beat out, but broke through the tubing, so I cut it off with a hacksaw and need to make a slight bend in it. I will try to post a picture of the completed project.
